When not idling my time away on Twitter or Pandaemonium, I am writing a book: a history of moral thought, to be published by Atlantic next year. (I am pretty sure of the title, but until it is fixed, it will just remain ‘the book’). The aim of the book is to explore  the development of moral thought within its social and historical context and to address the question: Why is it that we live in an age in which we are increasingly drawn to view issues in moral terms and yet possess such an impoverished moral vocabulary?

I thought it might be useful from time to time to post in Pandaemonium small sections from the book, and to open it up for discussion. So, to begin at the beginning, here is the opening section of Chapter One.